Learn English Chimamanda Adichie Have a good BS detector with BIG subtitles

Harvard class of 2018 hello thank you so

much for asking me to be here today it

meant a lot to me to know that you the

students select the class day speaker

thank you congratulations to you and to

all your loved ones who are here

I spent a wonderful year at the

Radcliffe Institute here at Harvard

during a fellowship in 2011 and I fell

in love with Cambridge and so it’s very

good to be back

my name is Chimamanda in Ybor it means

my personal spirit will never be broken

I’m not sure why but some people find it

difficult to pronounce a few years ago I

spoke at an event in London the English

woman who was to introduce me had

written my name phonetically on a piece

of paper and backstage she held on

tightly to this paper while repeating

the pronunciation over and over I could

tell she was very eager to get it right

and then she went out to the stage and

gave a lovely introduction and ended

with the words ladies and gentlemen

please welcome chimichenga I told I told

the story at a dinner party shortly

afterwards and one of the guests seemed

very annoyed that I was laughing about

it that was so insulting he said that

English woman could have tried harder

but the truth is she did try very hard

in fact she ended up calling me a fried

burrito because she had tried very hard

and then ended up with an

human mistake that was the result of

anxiety so the point of this story is

not to say that you can call me

chimichanga don’t even think about it

the point is that intent matters that

context matters

somebody might very well call me

chimichanga

out of a malicious desire to mock my

name and that I would certainly not

laugh about but there is a difference

between malice and a mistake we now live

in a culture of calling out a culture of

outrage and you should call people out

you should be outraged

but always remember context and never

disregard intent if I were asked the

title of my address to you today I would

say above all else do not lie or don’t

like too often which is really to say

tell the truth but lie in the ward the

idea the act has such political potency

in America today but it somehow feels

more apt above all else do not lie I

grew up in Nigeria through military

dictatorships and through incipient

democracies and America always felt

aspirational when yet another absurd

thing happened politically we would say

this can never happen in America

but today the political discourse in

America includes questions that are

straight from the land of the absurd

questions such as should we call a lie a

lie when is a lie a lie and so class of

2018 at

Oh time has it felt as agent as now that

we must protect and value the truth

before I tell you about not lying I must

first admit

so before I tell you about not lying I

must first admit the line I routinely

lie about my height even at the doctor’s

office in Lagos when I’m meeting friends

for lunch I lie about being stuck in

traffic when I’m really still at home

only just getting dressed now there are

other lies sadly however I cannot tell

you about them without having to kill

you afterwards but what I know is that I

have always felt my best and done my

best when I hear toward truth when I

don’t lie and the biggest regrets of my

life of those times when I did not have

the courage to embrace the truth now

tell you the truth does not mean that

everything will work out actually it

sometimes doesn’t I’m not asking you to

tell the truth because it will always

work out but because you will sleep well

at night and there is nothing more

beautiful than to wake up every day

holding in your hand the full measure of

your integrity many years ago before my

first novel was published I attended a

Writers Conference here in the US it was

a gathering of many aspiring writers and

a few established writers now the former

there sparrin writers sucking up to the

latter the established writers was a

revered ritual of the conference and so

during one of the breaks I walked up to

a man and established writer whose name

I knew well but whose work I had not

read I shook his hand and told him what

a fan I was I love your work I said his

wife was sitting next to him so which of

his books have you read she asked and I

froze which had

you read she asked again everyone at the

table was quiet watching waiting I

smiled a mad smile and I mumbled the one

about the one about the man discovering

himself which of course was complete

but I thought it might be

convincing since that kind of describes

half of all the novels written by men

and then I fled but before I fled I

heard the writer say to his wife honey

you shouldn’t have done that

but the truth is that I shouldn’t have

done that

to read a novel is to give honor to art

why lie about giving honor to something

to which you have not I was of course

absolutely mortified that day but I have

come to respect what that writers wife

had a fantastic detector and

now that I have the good fortune of

being an established writer one who does

not like to miss an opportunity to

wallow in praise by the way I can sense

when a person is saying empty words and

it feels much worse than if they had

said nothing at all so have a good

detector if you don’t have it

now walk on it but having that detector

means that you must also use it on

yourself and sometimes the hardest

truths are those we have to tell

ourselves when I first started sending

out my early writing to agents and

publishers and started getting

rejections I convinced myself that my

walk had simply not found the right home

which might have been true but there was

another truth that took me much longer

to consider but the manuscript was not

very good

and in fact the first novel I wrote or

what I thought was a novel eventually

needed to be put away in a drawer and

I’m so grateful that it was never

published it is hard to tell ourselves

the truth about our failures our

fragilities our uncertainties it is hard

to tell ourselves that maybe we haven’t

done the best that we can it is hard to

tell ourselves the truth of our emotions

that maybe what we feel is hurt rather

than anger that maybe it is time to

close the chapter of a relationship and

walk away and yet when we do we are the

better off for it I understand that the

Harvard College mission calls on you to

be citizen leaders I don’t even know

what citizen leader means it sort of

sounds like a Harvard Graduate saying I

went to college in Boston which by the

way has to be the most immodest form of

modesty please class of 2018 when you

asked where you went to college just say

Harvard

by the way by the way I went to Yale for

graduate school not New Haven which has

other universities but we also know that

in the grand snobbery sweepstakes of

prestigious American colleges grad

school doesn’t really count its

undergrad that counts so it’s entirely

possible that I don’t even know how all

of this works so you’re charged to be

citizen leaders which I suppose means

that you’re charged to be leaders I

often wonder who will be led if everyone

is supposed to be a leader but whether

but whether you are a leader or whether

you are the lead I urge you always to

bend toward truth to err on the side of

truth and to help you do this make

literature your religion which is to say

read widely read fiction and poetry and

narrative nonfiction make the human

story the center of your understanding

of the world think of people as people

not as abstractions who have to conform

to bloodless logic but as people fragile

imperfect with prides that can be

wounded and hearts that can be touched

literature is my religion I have learned

from literature that we humans are

flawed all of us are flawed but even

while flawed we are capable of enduring

goodness we do not need first to be

perfect before we can do what is right

and just

and you have a class of 2018 are not

unfamiliar with speaking the truth when

you stood alongside dining-hall walkers

during the strike when you protest at

the end of daca when you supported the

black lives matter movement you were

speaking the truth about the dignity

that every single human being deserves I

applaud you I urge you to continue

[Applause]

but remember that now outside the cocoon

of Harvard the consequences will be

greater the stakes will be higher please

don’t let that stop you from telling the

truth sometimes especially in

politicized spaces telling the truth

will be an act of courage

be courageous never set out to provoke

for the sake of provoking but never

silence yourself out of fear that a

truth you speak might provoke be

courageous people can be remarkably

resistant to the facts that they do not

like but don’t let that silence you from

speaking the truth be courageous be

courageous enough to acknowledge that

even if there is no value in the

position of the other side there is

value in knowing what that position is

listen to the other side at least the

reasonable other side be courageous

enough to acknowledge that democracy is

always fragile and that justice has

nothing to do with the political left or

the political right be courageous enough

to recognize those things that get in

the way of telling the truth the empty

cleverness the morally bankrupt irony

the desire to please the deliberate of

fuchsine the tendency to confuse

cynicism for sophistication be

courageous enough to accept that life is

messy your life will not always

perfectly match your ideology sometimes

even your choices will not align with

your ideology don’t justify and

rationalize it acknowledge it because it

is in trying to justify that we get into

that twisting dark unending tunnel of

lies from which it is sometimes

impossible to re-emerge halt be

courageous enough to say

I don’t know this might be harder to do

with everyone calling you Harvard but

ignorant acknowledged is an opportunity

ignorant denied is a closed door and it

takes courage to admit to the truth of

what you do not know some people think

that Harvard is the best school in the

world personally I’m not so sure I need

to know what my people like Yale think

about that but I do know that for many

people all over the world Harvard has

become much more than just a school

Harvard is a metaphor for untouchable

intellectual achievement and now that

you are Harvard graduates

well actually almost Harvard graduates

you don’t actually have your degrees you

wouldn’t get them until tomorrow and I

suppose there is still time for the

Harvard administration folks to change

their minds about giving it to you but

assuming they don’t change their minds

and you do get your degrees tomorrow and

become Harvard graduates the world will

make assumptions about you many of them

will be to your benefit

such as the assumption of competence and

intelligence employers will pay

attention to your resume when they see

Harvard on it but there will be other

assumptions people who don’t know

anything about you except that you went

to Harvard will assume that you feel

superior that you think you’re all that

they will roll their eyes when you make

a normal human mistake you might here at

some point in your life in a tool that

cannot be described as nice

there goes Harvard now full disclosure a

friend once told me that the only thing

he learned at Harvard was to behave like

a person who went to Harvard and I have

often repeated that story quite

gleefully so you will inspire resentment

and

hopefully that will help you keep in

mind the humanity of everyone including

the privileged but these are some shells

that people will make about you a

minuscule compared to the enormous

privilege that comes with a Harvard

degree you now have a certain kind of

access a certain kind of power and I

know it is terribly cliched to say that

you must now use this power to change

the world but really you must now use

this power to change the world

[Applause]

change a slice of the world no matter

how small if you feel a sense of

dissatisfaction with the status quo

nurture that dissatisfaction be

propelled by your dissatisfaction act

get into the system and change the

system challenge the steel assumptions

that undergird so many of America’s

cultural institutions tell new stories

champion new storytellers because the

truth is that the universal does not

belong to any one group of people

everybody’s story is potentially

universal it just needs to be told well

change the media in America make it

about truth not about entertainment not

about profit-making but about

and and while you’re doing it be astute

about when you need balance and when you

don’t because sometimes seeking balance

gets in the way of telling the truth if

you’re reporting about the Sun rising in

the east you do not need to hear the

other side because there is no real

other side a Harvard degree will give

you access and opportunities but sadly I

have to inform you that it will not make

you invincible you still have that

fragile human core at the center of all

of us there will be times when you are

petrified of failing when fear of

failure holds you back in those moments

here is the truth that is easy to forget

you don’t actually know that you will

fail I was lucky to be given a great

gift by the universe knowing from

childhood what I loved most I was lucky

to have wonderful supportive parents who

encouraged me and my parents are here

today

writing is what I love had I not had the

good fortune of being published I would

be somewhere right now completely

unknown possibly broke but I would be

writing some of you here today like me

know what you love and some of you don’t

if you don’t know you will if not

something that you love then something

that you like or something that you

don’t hate or something you will find it

but to find it you must try the

wonderful Shonda Rhimes said very wisely

that you have to do something until you

can do something else try if it doesn’t

work out try something else I knew from

spending a year in medical school that

it was not for me actually that’s not

really true I knew even before medical

school but going to medical school

clarified it for me and it’s not wasted

time it’s experience and experience will

serve you in ways you do not expect I

cannot tell you how many times in the

course of writing my second novel half

of a Yellow Sun which was a deeply

which was a deeply emotional book for me

I felt choked with uncertainty I would

climb into bed and eat chocolate but I

knew that after all the chocolate eating

after all the sinking into a dark place

that I would get up and keep writing I

cannot tell you how often I would sit

down to write and instead I would find

myself going online to look at shoes and

to put different shoes in various online

carts and then remove some and put some

back an order some and then not all out

so I’m actually thinking of starting a

society of esteemed procrastinators and

I suspect that many of you would

probably sign up procrastinating is a

form of fear and it is difficult at

knowledge fear but the truth is that you

cannot create anything of value without

both self-doubt and self belief without

self-doubt you become complacent without

self belief you cannot succeed you need

both and there is also the fear of

measuring up of keeping up which for you

might be heightened by the heavy weight

of all those Harvard expectations I want

to share a line from a lovely poem by

Mary Oliver whoever you are no matter

how lonely the world offers itself to

your imagination when you fall into the

funk of competition when you compare

yourself with other Harvard graduates

when you worry that you didn’t get that

job at Goldman or McKinsey or in Silicon

Valley right after graduation or didn’t

win a Pulitzer at 30 or didn’t become a

managing director partner of something

at 35

think of literature think of the early

bloomers and the late bloomers think of

the many experimental novels that do not

follow the traditional form your story

does not have to have a traditional arc

there is an ebow scene Vanya G Cooney

bhutesu Xia it translates literally to

whenever you wake up that is your

morning what matters is that you wake up

the world is calling you

America is calling you there is work to

be done there are tarnished things that

need to shine again there are broken

things that need to be made whole again

you are in a position to do this you can

do it be courageous tell the truth I

wish you courage and I wish you well

[Applause]